Today we visited the Palazzo Davanzati. This is where you can see how rich people lived in the 1300s. The house original belonged to the Davizzi family, then the Davanzati family lived here from the 1500s to the 1800s. It was then converted to a museum.

The grand house is set in a stone tower house . Florence had many of these tower houses in the early years. Families fortified themselves within these large buildings, adding on layers as their family extended. In the old days, the tower houses also had architectural projections which jutted out above alley ways to give them extra rooms. This (museum) house has been furnished with period pieces, and some of them are really quite beautiful. Amazing wooden ceilings, large wooden tables and dressers, carved beds and the most amazing wooden entry doors with the obligatory nails banged into them to ensure no one could hack them down. The house is perfectly preserved and well worth a visit.

We then caught a bus to Castello to visit one of the Medici Villas, Villa Della Petraea. There are dozens of these Medici Villas and apparently they are all huge with great gardens. This one has fabulous views of Florence, dozens of rooms, great furniture.... The best part is a covered courtyard in the centre of the Villa with a glass roof so that the courtyard is bathed in light. It has a massive chandelier, plus deer heads scattered around everywhere. So very OTT !! The guide was a little unimpressive, obviously wished we would hurry up so she could get back to whatever she was doing before we turned up!

When we got back to Florence we saw the aftermath of the storm that hit while we were at Castello. We thought it was bad - lots of rain which mostly fell while we were on the bus, but back in Florence they had a huge hail storm which made the place look like it had snow everywhere! Two of the windows in our apartment were cracked, and there were large puddles of rainwater everywhere. The church down the road had lost windows, and the trees around the area were pretty denuded as their leaves were ripped off during the hail. Our windows were covered in leaves and we are on the 5th and 6th floors!

Finally, I took some photos of some street signs around the place. There are some really funny ones, and half the time we have no idea what they are depicting!

About to have dinner - given all our exercise today we are splurging (ravioli and salad, a traditional Tuscan dessert called schiacciata, and a reasonable quantity of chianti). Almost doing 1000 steps every day if we get to have dessert and wine!